Rainbow's End (31 page)

“I'm not much on herbal remedies,” said Malcolm doubtfully. “Give me my chemicals every time, thank you. Why won't people face it that Valium and Percodan have kicked Mother Nature's ass?” He rattled the vial.

Valium and Percodan weren't a patch on illusion, lies, and Sergeant Wiggins. “I agree, usually. But this stuff, taken in combination, will evaporate that head. Trust me.” Trouble was, Jury couldn't figure out the combination. Color-marker letters were supposed to be in league with the colored numberings. 2.2/3-5. What in the hell was that supposed to mean? Maybe the 2.2 meant two doses. Why in hell was he trying to figure it out, anyway? He shoved this little bag across to Malcolm. “Now, what you do with this one is take two doses.”

Malcolm frowned. “Two? How much is that?”

“One dose is three milligrams and the other one is five.” Jury looked steadily into his eyes. “But you only take two times three. I know,” Jury said in a tone meant to reassure. “It's very complex.”

Malcolm scratched his head. “God, your chemist should be up at the Institute with the rest of them. So how do I take this stuff? Just put it on my tongue?”

“Beef tea is best.”

“What's that?”

“Like bouillon.” The pert-looking waitress was just then setting down two more coffees. Malcolm asked her for some beef bouillon or consommé.

As if pleased to give him any bad news she could, with a shake of her Bo-Peep curls, she said, “If it's not on the menu, you can't have it.”

“Why?
You're
not on the menu and I've had—”

Red circles blossomed on her cheeks as she stared at him in a fury.

She flounced away; Malcolm shrugged.

Jury was beginning to like Malcolm Corey. He wasn't as stuffy as he'd first seemed. More sardonic than conceited, perhaps. “Tell me more about Angela Hope.”

“Not much that I know. They live outside of town, and I think there's a housekeeper, some old Indian woman. I've never seen her. The parents died years and years ago, so I guess Angela had to have some help when Mary was little, someone to take care of her. Though, frankly, there's one person I'd stake my life on not needing care.”

“Tough kid, huh? But we all do, some time or other. Need taking care of. I get the impression you and Mary aren't mates.”

That he took to be very funny. “To say the least. Not just me, however. Mary looks at you as if she's looking straight
through
, looking through to the something or somebody stupid enough to set you in her line of vision in the first place.” He laughed, looked behind him as if there might be such a person back there. Probably just restless for his beef bouillon. “But as I say, I'm not the only one. Mary's gaze must have absolutely
evaporated
Sukie Bartholomew where she stood.”

“She's only a little girl,” Jury protested.

“Uh-huh. Well, she was very protective of Angela. I wondered sometimes who took care of who in that twosome. Mary saw Sukie as a threat, I think.”

“Was she jealous of the Bartholomew woman's friendship with her sister?”

Malcolm made a sound in his throat disdaining such a ridiculous notion. “Jealousy is one of those mundane and mortal emotions Mary doesn't stoop to.”

“Come on.” Jury laughed. “You make her sound less than human.”

“Or more than.” Malcolm reflected. “I think she talks to trees and coyotes. Actually, she's got this coyote that she's trying to convince me is a dog. Some dog.”

“A
tame
coyote?” Jury laughed.

“Is it? Beats me. That's why I give the damned dog a wide berth.”

The waitress was back with the cup of bouillon and set it before Malcolm without comment. She left, rather hurriedly.

“So I stir this stuff up in it?” When Jury nodded, he sprinkled the contents of both packets into the broth. Jury watched as he sipped. “Hmm. Doesn't taste bad.” He wrinkled his nose. “Get a whiff of marjoram, I think. Maybe sage.”

“Uh-huh.”

“How long's it supposed to take to work?”

“Ten minutes. Faster than Valium.”

“Sukie sells a lot of crap like this—oh, sorry. I don't mean
this
is. Sukie just goes in for old Indian remedies. Roots. Rocks. Tree bark.”

“ ‘Rocks'?”

“Yeah. Pebbles and so forth.” He blew on the bouillon, drank the rest.

Jury would have to take this cure home to Wiggins. “What kinds of pebbles?”

“Who knows?” Malcolm leaned down, stretched out his arm, scooped up a little earth between the flagstones. “Like these.” He picked out a few broken bits of rock. He was leaning back again, face raised skyward, eyes closed.

“Let me ask you something: if Angela Hope was murdered—?”

The eyes snapped open as if a host of flashbulbs had just gone off in his face. “
Murdered
?”

“It's possible.”

“Angela murdered? You're asking me, can I think of anyone who hated her enough to kill her?” He shook his head. “No. And, anyway, if it were someone from around here, that person would have had to hop a plane to Britain.” He frowned. “Only one who's done that is Dolly Schell, her cousin.”

“To identify the body.”

“So she'd be leaving it a little late, wouldn't she, for murder?” Malcolm said sarcastically.

“There's money. Love. Revenge. As motives, I mean. Not just hatred.”

Again, he shook his head. “Didn't have any money I know of. I seriously doubt Angela would have done anything to warrant revenge. And I don't think Psyche would actually kill her for love of yours truly.” He flashed Jury a smile.

“Competition?”

“Well . . . ” The syllable trailed off. “She's been watching us, you know, ever since you sat down.” But he didn't look in that direction and neither did Jury. “A real bitch.”

“Yes, you've mentioned that before.”

“Have you got the Santa Fe Institute on your little list? There's some guy, some scientist over there, who seemed to know her pretty well.”

“Anders. But I haven't talked to him.”

Malcolm rubbed his temple. “I still feel like shit.”

“Hasn't been ten minutes yet. Trust me.”

“Oh, I do, I do,” he said without conviction.

For a few more minutes they sat there, Malcolm with eyes closed, slouched in his chair. Jury looking directly across the street into the shadowy face of Sukie Bartholomew. He waved. The face quickly disappeared.

“Hey.” Malcolm suddenly opened his eyes. “You're right; it's mostly gone.”

“Good. Well, I'll be off.” Jury got up, pocketing the remaining plastic bags. Looking down at the one labeled “N,” he sighed. “Wouldn't happen to have a cigarette, would you?”

“I don't smoke.”

“Thank God.”

If ever a photograph didn't do justice to a person, it was the dust-jacket photo of Nils Anders. It had not, among other things, given any indication of the man's intensity, although the book itself would probably have conveyed that. He was considerably more handsome than the photo allowed, and was, in person, as engaging as he appeared in the opening pages of his book. Jury stood inside Anders's office at the Santa Fe Institute thinking that if the man had decided to become a priest, a missionary, or a guru he'd have had no trouble in winning apostles. If he'd become a serial killer, God help us all.

On women, he must have wrought absolute havoc.

Certainly, the woman talking to Anders when Jury entered was one who had fallen under his spell, given the way she was looking at him. Jury hung back in the doorway and heard her extending a dinner invitation.

To which Anders replied, “I don't think I can make it, Dolly.”

“Even you have to eat,” she said, as if he were generally thought of as someone more than mortal.

It was clear to Jury that Dr. Anders wasn't aware of his effect on this woman, or of his turning down her invitation. Her face, when she turned to leave, was a mask of woe. Jury stepped aside as she swept through the door, barely glancing at him. He smiled. She didn't.

Anders offered Jury a molded plastic chair and sat himself down on a wooden swivel chair. As Jury told him his reason for being there, Anders swung backwards and forwards, slowly, rhythmically. Then he stopped and the chair creaked a little.

“Angie.” He shook his head briefly, looked down at nothing and then past Jury, again at nothing.

That he said nothing else surprised Jury, for Anders struck him as a man who would be in constant motion, charged with energy that he could release only in act or words. But instead, Anders sat for some moments, having uttered the name only; Jury was rather glad to hear it shortened, as that bespoke a kind of closeness. But Anders neither verified nor denied that closeness.

Jury went on. “I understand you were a very good friend of hers, Dr. Anders.”

“I was, yes.” Then Anders looked at him, slightly surprised. His changeable eyes darkened. “You mean sexual?”

Jury shrugged slightly. “It's just a question. You don't have to answer it, certainly.”

Anders's look dismissed such a possibility. “I don't have much time for women, Mr. Jury. Love affairs are too consuming.” He paused and looked off into that space again. “I was in love once. . . . ” His voice trailed off; his tone a little wondering, questing, quizzical, as if recalling a poorly formulated hypothesis, an inconclusive experiment—something he might still be turning over in his mind and wondering where it had gone wrong.

“Why do others seem to think the two of you were lovers?”

“I don't know.” Anders laughed. “You'll have to ask
them
, won't you?”

He rocked in his swivel chair. His smile was such that Jury had the uncomfortable sense he was serving as a source of amusement for Nils Anders, who then asked, “Why's it important, either way?”

“I don't know, Dr. Anders; that's the truth. I'm just trying to get a fix on Angela Hope. What her life was like.”

Anders nodded, clasped his hands behind his neck, tilting sideways slightly. It was a boyish gesture, as if he might be about to zoom off, pretending he was an airplane. He said, “That's reasonable. Assuming, of course, it's reasonable you're here in the first place.” He flashed Jury a smile, totally disarming.

It was a point in his favor, Jury thought, that he wasn't at all interested in who had given Jury this impression.

Then more soberly, Anders said: “Angela. Yes.” The eyes literally appeared to cloud over, blue evaporating to a wintry gray. “Don't think my attitude trivializes Angie's death. That left me feeling very empty. Angie was someone I really liked, liked to be around, liked to talk to. There aren't many people I feel that way about. They'll waste
your time, give ‘em half a chance, in mind-numbing social chat. Angela didn't do that; when she talked, she talked about things that were important to her.”

“May I ask what they were, those things?”

It was snowing now, flakes as big as stones, and looking heavy as them too, in their weighty descent. Anders's eyes were fixed on a point out there somewhere and Jury felt impelled to follow the direction of his gaze.

Nothing except big flakes of snow drifting onto the winding road that had probably once divided empty land but which now twisted through million-dollar properties. Jury waited, but Anders didn't answer.

“Dr. Anders?”

“Hm? Oh. Sorry. I was just looking at the snow. It looks backlit, doesn't it? Angela. Hmm.”

Jury followed his gaze. “It reminds you of Angela?”

“Not directly. But then, few things are direct, are they. Light is my, ah, thesis, I'd guess you'd say. Focus. I wrote this book—”

“I saw it, on Angela Hope's shelf.” He didn't tell Anders he'd borrowed it.

“The title is just another way of saying ‘scattered consciousness.' ”

“Meaning?”

“Meaning . . . meaning. It's too simple to say ‘lack of focus.' But that's the best I can do at the moment.” He smiled. “My mind's muddled today.”

Meaning, really, that Jury's probably was. The human condition. Jury smiled, too. “What things was Angela interested in, can you tell me?”

“Sure. Besides her work, the culture of the Hopis, the Anasazi, myth, ritual, the land—I mean, this country. It's very beautiful, isn't it?” Jury nodded; he went on. “She thought it all had something to do with personal salvation. Hers.”

“In what way?”

“It's very difficult to understand somebody else's ‘way.' I'll tell you one thing; she had a lot of respect for silence. That's tough for people. Well, not for me; I'm off in one world or another, in one of my fugue states. An irritating habit, I've been told more than once, by more than one. Angie had a sort of mystical turn of mind. . . . ” He paused, frowning. “But, to tell the truth, well, I hate to be patronizing,
but it was the trendy sort of mysticism. You know, reciting mantras, or praying in a corner given over to icons and candles. That sort. Not muscular.”

Although Anders didn't actually scoff, Jury imagined it was only because Angela Hope had been a good friend. “ ‘Muscular'? What do you mean?”

“The sort of mysticism you have to take to the gym and exercise until you sweat buckets. Saint John of the Cross. T. S. Eliot. That kind.”

“
Four Quartets
was in her bookcase. She certainly appeared to have given it a good thumbing through.”

“Uh-huh,” said Anders, noncommittally.

“Was she enthusiastic about your own work?”

He laughed. “Would have been, I'm sure, if she'd understood it.”

Jury smiled. “I read a little of the book. I guess I opened it somewhere in the middle. I have to admit, it's too deep for me.”